Survivors [Book 1]

4. Mack

All eight of us were armed and ready to leave when Kevin, my eleven year old brother ran up to me.

"Is it true? Did they really come back?" he asked.

"We don't know yet"

He is a reckless kid, which is good sometimes, but he gets into trouble a lot because of it. If he disappears for a while, we're always worried he's escaped and does something irresponsible. After dad's death, I became the man of the family, but it's hard to reconcile the leadership of the unit with the family.

"Let me go with you!" he pleaded.

"You know I can't" I crouched down to him "They need you here! Go help mom with the medical supplies!"

He looked back at me defiantly, I could see in his eyes that he was sick of the way we were treating him. He wants to grow up, he doesn't want to be treated like a child. He's said that several times. But he can't do anything with the fact that he really is just a kid. It's bad enough that this war cut his childhood in half, but maybe he still has a chance to live a normal life again. Who am I to take that away from him?

"Go!" I commanded, pointing to the entrance.

He stormed off and I joined my team. Reed was behind the wheel, Jenna was next to him, the others in the back seat and on the platform. I too stood on the latter and slapped my palm twice on the top of the car, indicating that we're ready to go.

"Head south-west!" I shouted.

Reed trampled on the gas and we rolled out of the school yard, and onto the main road, where we were dodging the vehicles the people left behind. During the barely ten-minute drive, until we reached the entrance of the highway out of town, we saw nothing suspicious. There wasn't a soul in the area, not even a stray dog. Reed steered the car to the side and we all got off, while two of us covered it, I pulled out a map.

"Alright, listen" I put the paper on the engine hood and started pointing at it "The troops were killed here" I poked two blocks away from where we stand right now "So that's probably where they came from" I turned to the direction of the highway "Reed and Trent, you two go up there" I pointed to the top of the houses around us "Look for a place you can see the most from. The rest of us will walk on the way out of town"

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" asked Chip "We're an easy target on the highway, there is nowhere to hide. They can come with helicopters!"

"Then we'll have Trent and his baby" I motioned at the black man who proudly lifted his long-range weapon "Are there any more questions?" Everyone shook their heads "Let's go then!"

Reed and Trent ran into one of the apartment buildings and we walked down the road. We marched forward with machine guns ready to shoot. Three on the right lane-which was full of cars- and two on the empty other side.

Everyone wanted to flee when we heard that the Veerans are coming, which caused such a traffic jam that they had to leave the cars and continue on foot. I'm sure there's a car here that belongs to someone from the camp.

So far, everything was clear, the only sign of a human was a military flask engraved with Cyrillic letters- the ones used in the Veranian Empire. I couldn't read it, but I'm guessing it was its owner's name.

"I see movement about seven hundred feet ahead of you, behind a car!" came Reed's voice from the sizzling radio on my belt.

"What kind of car?" I asked while stopping the others.

"Red Sedan, overturned in the exit lane" he answered "Trent's ready if there's a problem"

It's reassuring to have our butts covered if things went wrong and Trent is our best shooter. He was in training to become a sniper before the war broke out.